Are There Too Many Tournaments?

In 1973 there were two Go tournaments held regularly in Britain, and all
active players seemed to turn up to them: these were the British Go
Congress and Wessex. Five years later, in 1978, these two tournaments
were still going strong. In addition there were the London Open, Cambridge,
Northern, Ipswich, Leicester, British Lightning and various tournaments at
the London Go Centre.

In 1983 there were 13 tournaments. This year we add Cheshire and possibly
others as well. Attendance at individual tournaments has not grown in proportion,
though: The most notable case being the Wessex with 62 entrants compared with over
100 in the late 1970's - and one must enquire whether there are, in fact, too
many tournaments.

An early Wessex tournament included players from Cambridge, Bolton and Plymouth.
People seemed to be happy to travel such long distances, but now such sacrifices
are unnecessary. Tournaments are tending to get more 'local' in terms of attendance.
One advantage of this is that more weaker players are involved in tournaments, which
can be seen as a distinct plus.

However, the success of a tournament requires a variety of possible opponents for
each entrant, preferably ones that they have never, or at least infrequently, played
before. If tournaments get too parochial, players may run out of suitable opponents.
One solution to this particular problem is to reject the straitjacket of the 3 round
MacMahon tournament with all games played even. The evident success of the Leigh Sinton
handicap tournament indicates one possible alternative.

So what is the ideal number of tournaments? The current calendar does not appear unduly
crowded, but in 1981, for example, Hammersmith started running one a month; attendances
withered and finally the tournaments petered out. We must be careful of arbitrarily
filling every weekend with a tournament - we don't want to suffer from a surfeit.

This article is from the British Go Journal
Issue 61[1]
which is one of a series[2] of back issues now available on the web.

Last updated Wed Jan 02 2013. If you have any comments, please email the webmaster on web-master AT britgo DOT org.